With the advent of computers, interactive electronic communications, and the Internet, as well as advances in the digital realm of consumer information, has come a reinvention of conventional entertainment and communication services to enhance programming, recording, and viewing of multimedia, such as broadcast television programs. Traditionally, broadcast media, being based on pre-computer age technology, has developed on its own path, without any regard to other media systems. With readily available, cost-effective broadband services, bandwidth intensive applications, such as audio and video streaming, have become viable mediums. Unfortunately, little or no effort has been put forth to converge these distinct paths or enable seamless integration between traditional broadcast systems and broadband data networks to provide more robust content delivery systems.
Therefore, there is a need for an approach that can efficiently and effectively provide content aggregation in support of virtual channels.